week - 08 - A summary

Pages are beeing replaced by streams. Words by pictures and videos. And information is becoming a cliché, slowly but gradulay. Welcome to the post-information age! A few words on whats hip and happening at the first UM Facebook group meeting yesterday. Around 40 people, most of them female and under 30 took part in what became my personal "meeting of the week". Thoughtful organizers and plates full of delicious cakes and snacks as well as drinks made everybody feel more "social" than during most meetings.

The first attempts to tap into the fabric of conversations of prospective students in order to engage with them on a more personal level where successful.The lessons learned where: # regular posts keep people's eyeballs busy # images and videos trumph text # the carrot that keeps the donkey going stays the same: prices and questionairs. An outstanding example is Maarten's facebook page of the faculty of law. The static HTML page includes an video with a message from the dean, quick links to the master and bachelor programs and students weblogs.

Also this week I was sitting together with people from KAAS and discussed solutions for their website as well as the "Creative Writing Course" by Lucia.

What's the buzz?
The Equis accreditation comitee visited the School whos international as well as national reputation is quiet impressive. My contribution was to dress up a bit our twitter and youtube channel. Facebook is part of the deal and beeing taken care of by Veerle and Heiner. I also launched the first department website: Economics and received already one email that included a request for change. The events and activities section was also renewed featuring now all seminars, conferences and the SBE calendar.
For PhD students and all who are interested I stumbled upon two links: #1 is the electronic disseration database which offers fresh RSS feeds of published theses here #2 and an illustrated guide to a PhD here.
Since Economics is our Business it is worth sharing this one

New Economy, New Wealth on Prezi

Prezi is a non-linear presentation tool used by everybody these days who feel limited by the way powerpoint has fooled us into believing that sequentiality is the holy grail of "the future of education". This is not to say that Prezi is uncool, but it makes every clear headed observer of the malstroem suspicious over its "newness". Dreaming of the Malstroem, Infonomics published a new video to explain to the world what it is! Kinematic Typography at its best and the video has already 90 views (3 days old). Here it is exclusively for you:



Last but not least there is the "revolution 2.0" in the former Magreb and Arab countries televised live on Aljazeera. For those who are not interested in social media might not notice this versioning of the word "Revolution". And for those who hate dictators and brutal regimes the words of Sergei Markof, a senior legislator from the ruling United Russia Party, might provide the necessary realism to put the Revolution 2.0 into the wider historical reality. In an article of yesterdays Wall Street Journal he spoke of the mainstream opinion held by the ruling class of Russia. "We in Russia have seen revolutions, and they often start out like the February one and end like the one in October".